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When Colin Hanks’ new Broadway show opens tomorrow night, the young actor hopes records are set. Not a box office record, but a record of a more astounding kind: having a writer hold out for at least two paragraphs before mentioning who his father is.

The thing is, we all know who his father is. Colin knows who his father is. But maybe it’s long since time to move past that. Maybe it’s time column inches were devoted to Hanks based solely on the quality of his performances and projects. Maybe it all starts tomorrow night with “33 Variations,” a play about an investigation into a Beethoven waltz.

Hanks sure hopes so.

“The most difficult thing is that no matter what else you do, it’s always going to be the one thing everyone talks about,” he says. “Before I even started out, I knew this was something that was always going to come up, no matter what, and so I just try and balance it against my love of the craft of acting.”

Coincidentally, “33 Variations” also features another famous offspring: Jane Fonda. Fonda plays a musicologist suffering from ALS who becomes obsessed with an obscure Beethoven waltz, written in the early 1800s after a music publisher asked famous composers to pen one variation on a waltz. Beethoven initially considered the project beneath him, but ultimately spent three years writing 33 different variations for reasons unknown.

Hanks plays Fonda’s nurse, who also falls for his charge’s daughter (Samantha Mathis). It’s a role Hanks nearly didn’t land. He was suffering from a cold during the audition, and his head was swimming from copious amounts of medication.

“I honestly don’t remember much of the audition at all,” he says. “The only moment I really recall was that the director had given me some sort of note and I did the scene sitting down because I was too weak to stand up. I remember going over to the director and literally having no clue if I’d done it right, because I couldn’t remember what he’d asked me to do.”

Besides his Broadway debut, Hanks is directing a documentary about Tower Records. “It’s an incredibly sad tale that mirrors what happened to the music industry because of the Internet and how people never go to the record store anymore,” he says.

He also stars in “The Great Buck Howard,” in movie theaters March 20, which should serve to distance him even more from his famous father-who-shall-not-be-named – except that his father’s in it. And, er, his father’s company produced it. Colin plays a law-school dropout who takes a job as an assistant to a washed-up mentalist (John Malkovich).

Hanks’ father plays his dad in the film, but Colin hopes no comparisons are forthcoming.

“I think that anyone who tries to hold me up to a higher standard is ridiculous,” he says. “It’s the same thing as, ‘I’m not as good as him,’ when the simple truth is that he’s had a lot more time on this earth, so obviously I’m not going to be as seasoned, because I’m 31 and he’s not.”

By the way, it’s Tom Hanks! His father is freakin’ Tom Hanks! Sorry, it was killing us.